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May 23, 2011

Trainees escape from Tuol Kork labour firm

Labour recruitment firm GPGC International PTE Ltd closed on Saturday
after 19 of its workers reportedly left the company’s headquarters in
Phnom Penh’s Tuol Kork district on Friday night.

A district
police officer who declined to be named said yesterday that the women
had shown up at the local police office complaining of coercive
conditions and a lack of food at GPGC. Police sent the workers back to
GPGC in order to be reunited with their parents, he added.

“When I
went to the company to see whether the company really detained the
workers and didn’t give them food as the workers said, what I saw was
different from what the workers said,” the officer said.

Tuol
Kork governor Seng Ratanak said that police and court officials had
investigated the situation at the firm on Saturday following the girls’
escape and claimed that all 27 trainees at GPGC had been allowed to
return home.

“The company did not prevent them from going back
home, but the company needs the workers’ parents to pay nearly 2 million
riel (around US$500),” Seng Ratanak said.

“The company director
said that he did not believe the parents would pay back the money, but
he agreed that [the trainees] could leave.” But Moeun Tola, head of the
labour programme at the Community Legal Education Centre, said yesterday
that he was concerned that the trainees could be prevented from
returning home.

“I am afraid the authorities colluded with the company to keep the workers detained,” he said.

Representatives from GPGC International could not be reached for comment.

Meanwhile,
two recruits from Top Manpower Recruitment Agency left the firm’s
headquarters in Meanchey district on Thursday amid claims from a local
rights group that the company had detained them.

Am Sam Ath,
senior monitor at the rights group Licadho, said that the women had fled
because they found it difficult at the company and missed their
families.

“They were forced to study and could not go outside,” he said.

Representatives from Top Manpower Recruitment could not be reached for comment yesterday.

The
Kingdom’s labour recruitment sector has been embroiled in scandal in
recent months, as women from several different agencies have claimed
they have been held at training centres against their will.